My pictures were taken on Bascom Hill and the Memorial Union Terrace — overflow areas with piped in sound/video. I did not go through security and into the Library Mall area where the President could be seen in person, and I thought we were going to get some grand wide-angle shots of the President and his enthusiasts.

ADDED: Here's the vista in the Cap Times. "Overwhelmingly" is not the right adverb. It's too much of an understatement. (Thanks to former law student, in the comments, for pointing me there.)

Going to Madison, WI expecting anything else would be like, I don't know, expecting a massive new federal entitlement to save money or expecting government ownership of a large industrial company to improve performance.

I think it was on this morning's Today Show. Wife watches it regularly, and as I was eating breakfast I noticed a clip of Obama speaking with a bunch of college-age kids wearing red & white T-shirts behind him as a backdrop.

if your rally is overwhelmingly white in Washington DC, that's not OK because DC is 54% black

A solid attempt, but Washington DC is the nation's capital and therefore a place where people frequently and regularly travel to do their protesting and such. It is absurd to expect the ethnic makeup of may rally in Washington DC to be representative of the city because the rallies tend to be national events, or, more often, highly specialized events.

Is the Washington DC 54 percent black, just for example? What about the recent Vietnamese-American Appreciation Day?

President Thomas Jefferson often practiced his speeches before his uninterested slaves. In much the same way he practiced his sexual techniques.(Pressing the Flesh, Presidential Campaigns and the People Who Run Them, Doris Kearns Goodwin, E Knof & Sons, 2009)

froggyprager: The appropriate phrase is "peoples of color" but "faces of color" is excellent and I hope it takes hold. In examining the pictures, however, I am saddened to note that significantly less than one in sixteen has a face of color. One in sixteen would, of course, be the norm in the FLS Theory Of Crowds, all of which mirror the demographic of the locale. Wisconsin residents being six percent African American one would expect a similar turnout to see and hear our first African American president.

I know it's a Saul Alinsky-style political game you guys are playing - what's good for the goose, etc. - but I wonder if I'm not the only one who could give a damn what color the crowd was? It never occurred to me to think that way. Frankly, it strikes me as unAmerican to do so.

"Marcus Stanford, an Edgewood College senior from Madison, said: "I thought it was great. He talked about some great things. It was wonderful to see him in person. It's my birthday today, so it was the best birthday present ever. I'm speechless."

"Marcus Stanford, an Edgewood College senior from Madison, said: "I thought it was great. He talked about some great things. It was wonderful to see him in person. It's my birthday today, so it was the best birthday present ever. I'm speechless."

Seriously, an Obama speech as the best birthday present ever? The kid really needs to find someone to give him a blowjob.

MM, agreed. I've lived here for over 30 years and it's what I would have anticipated. That's not to say that the campus hasn't consistently had a diversity problem, because it has. They always seem to be working on it, but for today, it is what it is.

"If your rally is overwhelmingly white in North Dakota, that's OK because ND is overwhelmingly white. But if your rally is overwhelmingly white in Washington DC, that's not OK because DC is 54% black."

This is actually not very true. DC is pretty much 100% black or 100% white... depending on where you are.

But it doesn't matter anyway, because when there is a "rally" in DC, it's generally people who drive there (or even fly) for the purpose of having a rally in that place.

k*thy said: "That's not to say that the campus hasn't consistently had a diversity problem, because it has."

In line with the rest of this thread, why is a mostly white university in a mostly white state said to have a "diversity problem"? What's the problem?!? That the population doesn't reflect the wishful thinking of some minority group? That the vanilla crowd doesn't make for a visually interesting photo op? In fact, because Wisconsin is 90% white and the UW is only 75% white, couldn't it be said that the U has a "problem" of too much diversity? Wisconsin's 90% white taxpayers aren't being fairly represented at the state university!

But of course, to ask is to be labeled a racist. Ack. Now I remember why I try to avoid the race-trap threads.

Well the Madison campus is overwhelming white, although I walked behind a crowd of black folks, who like myself, did not make it into the Library Mall; I did notice a fair number of Asian students-- what to make of that?

Leftist tools, listen: Nobody on the right gives a particular fuck about the racial composition of the crowd at Obama's speech. Let me spell it out for you in simple steps, using simple words:

1. Leftists bitched and moaned that the tea parties had no diversity (despite all the diversity).

2. Obama's political rally on the Madison campus of the University of Wisconsin had no diversity.

3. Leftists now bitch and moan and give lame rationales when conservatives and libertarians point out that Obama's political rally on the Madison campus of the University of Wisconsin had no diversity.

...but I wonder if I'm not the only one who could give a damn what color the crowd was?...Frankly, it strikes me as unAmerican to do so.

Thank God. It strikes you that way because it IS unAmerican. I thought I was the only one, I started to say something earlier but I do loathe this subject. I didn't even notice the racial make-up of the crowd until others started talking about it.

I can hardly believe that after all these years we're leaving this obsession to our children. I hold Obama largely responsible for this. He could - SHOULD! - have been transformative on race. Instead he and his bunch play the race card so much it's become a joke.

And you know, I don't agree with fls much, but how is he supposed to produce a mixed race crowd in Madison Wisconsin? Bus in some brothers? Give me a break.

Instead he and his bunch play the race card so much it's become a joke.

Yes. For the right, this is an ironic and hilarious throwing down of the race card. Race is not a big deal for conservatives and libertarians. It's an absurd trope that the left uses to discredit the right.

@BJM"@roesch...You win the thread for trotting out two old, hoary racial stereotypes in one paragraph; studious Asians and folksy blacks."

I never before have read the phrase, "...trotting out, two old, hoary racial stereotypes..."; nor words even like them!

I live in No VA and work in DC, and all my neighbors (except for the Korean boy Andrew) are studious, and all of my fellow riders on the Green line are folksy black folk. But these are actual facts that are anecdotal and not factual. At all. Nor do any hoary statistics that I have ever read support any generalizations that could be drawn from these anecdotal observations. Nonetheless, I shall continue to enjoy living amongst these anecdotal people.

No surprise, when you start looking at a photo and criticize the racial makeup, it's not a very reasonable or nice thing to do. Sometimes, it's perfectly OK for a group of people to be mainly white.

that only reasonable reason to point out the whiteness is really to shut down demogogues who can't shut up about it. It's not really true that the Tea Party is all white, or unusually white, but regardless, it's a dumb attack. And people reject those, quite a lot, these days. Check back with me in november if you don't believe me.

Synova is exactly right. A rally at DC is not (usually) representative of the city's ethnic mix. A rally at madison, however, would be, for the most part, unless there was an active effort to bus people in from other parts of the country.

Madison is 84% white. I am willing to bet the university is even more so. according to USNews college diversity rankings, UWisc's diversity is pretty low - same as University of Utah at Salt Lake city, and just a little higher than and quite a bit lower than Texas Christian University in Fort Worth (!!), TX.